A Just COVID-19 Response & Recovery to Support Resilient Communities

The Greenlining Institute in coalition with APEN, SCOPE, CA ReLeaf and other partners developed a comprehensive set of principles and specific equity-centered recommendations that advance public health, economic opportunity, and climate resilience for Environmental Justice communities in response to COVID-19 and climate change. Our groups submitted the letter to the Governor's Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery and plan on sharing it with the governor's office and other key decision makers in the legislature and administration.

The Greenlining Institute calls upon Congress to pass a 4th stimulus package with health and racial equity considerations. Relief should be prioritized to safety net hospitals and clinics that serve a high number of low-income and uninsured patients. Health systems that receive funding should be required to 1) provide free COVID-19 testing to low-income and uninsured patients, 2) collect and report racial and ethinic demographic data to State public health departments for transparency and accountability, and 3) prioritize screening and resources for domestic violence.

The Greenlining Institute submitted a comment letter in response to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's proposed changes to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The Greenlining Institute submits this letter in support of modernizing and strengthening the CRA, while maintaining the original intent of the law: to combat redlining and discrimination in the financial sector. We highlight that the proposed rule does not meet the original spirit of the CRA and should not be adopted into law. We emphasize that changes to the CRA should focus on strengthening the law by adopting a focus on racial inequity and driving more investments to communities of color.

The California Legislature must prioritize racial equity in COVID-19 relief efforts. We call upon the Governor and legislature to 1) expeditie Medi-Cal coverage for undocumented elders, 2) prioritize support and resources for local clinics and community health centers, 3) increase access to free telehealth and internet services for low-income families, 4) provide oversight to hospitals and eliminate surprise medical billing, and 5) encourage health system contracts with diverse businesses as they spend relief funds.

Addressing the immediate impacts of COVID-19 is rightfully the main focus of our state’s response. In time, however, we must address the health, economic, and social fallout of this global pandemic and dedicate significant resources towards rebooting our economy and society. In doing so we have a responsibility to prioritize the needs of the most impacted and least equipped communities to bounce back on their own. This is our moment to collectively rewrite the story of what our world will become and what is possible when we work together. It demands that we let go of failed systems from the past and employ innovative strategies, so that we can build a new tomorrow together.

The Greenlining Coalition wrote a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom thanking him for his exemplary leadership during this crisis and urging him to ensure that vulnerable communities, diverse small businesses and grassroots nonprofits are prioritized in state-level recovery programs. Greenlining detailed policy recommendations that could help avert disaster for Black, Latinx and AAPI small business owners in California, as well as support diverse nonprofits and the communities they serve.

Diversity and inclusion are the building blocks of a fair society. Numerous academic and private-sector studies have shown that diverse businesses outperform homogenous organizations time and time again;

Transparency in an institution’s approach to diversity does not require any change to that institution’s business plan or practices, it merely gives consumers in our diverse nation the ability to fairly evaluate where they spend their hard-earned dollars; and

By 2040, the US will be majority people of color. Our communities have a right and responsibility to contribute to our nation's public, private, and non-profit sectors, and transparency data can help make clear where our participation is lacking.

The California Air Resources Board Must Adopt a Stronger Advanced Clean Truck Rule

Greenlining supports a stronger Advanced Clean Truck rule standard. As it stands, the ACT proposal would result in zero-emission trucks comprising four percent of California’s trucks by 2030; this is an insufficient standard and will fail to address the imminent, severe climate and public health consequences our state faces. We urge the California Air Resources Board to strengthen its proposal through the following mandates:

Increasing the overall mandates to ensure that by 2030 no less than 15 percent of medium and heavy-duty trucks on the road are zero-emitting.

Including Class 2b pickup trucks in the mandates beginning in 2024.

Outlining CARB's longer-term objectives for achieving 100 percent zero-emission trucks in various categories, and explaining how this phase of the rule is consistent with those objectives in attaining federal and state air quality and greenhouse gas objectives.

Greenlining supports a comprehensive housing package that includes important tenant protection legislation such as AB 1482. The bill caps annual rent increases at 7% plus inflation, which will provide some stability to cost-burdened households. The housing affordability crisis has left many Californians just one rent increase away from homelessness, and protection against rent gouging will be an important component of any legislative package to address the housing crisis. More than half of renters in the state of California spend at least 30% of their income on housing, including over 80% of low-income Californians; of these, two thirds are people of color. Legislation that protects the most vulnerable households from displacement is crucial to ensuring that Californians of all racial backgrounds and income brackets can thrive.

Greenlining is sponsoring AB 961, authored by Assembly member Eloise Gomez Reyes of the 47th District. AB 961 would adopt a recommendation in the California Energy Commission’s unanimously adopted SB 350 Low-Income Barriers Study to establish common definitions of “non-energy benefits” or community benefits of clean energy programs, develop standards to measure them, and prioritize projects that promote them in Environmental Justice Communities. This means that regulators would consider additional benefits of clean energy programs, including job creation and improved community health, in evaluating their effectiveness.

Removing Barriers, Creating Economic Opportunity

About The Greenlining Institute

Founded in 1993, The Greenlining Institute envisions a nation where communities of color thrive and race is never a barrier to economic opportunity. We advance economic opportunity for people of color through advocacy, community and coalition building, research, and leadership development. We work on a variety of major policy issues because economic opportunity doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Rather than seeing these issues as being in separate silos, Greenlining views them as interconnected threads in a web of opportunity. The Greenlining Institute is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 94-3173571.